ORLANDO (USA): Former vice president Al-Gore plunged back into the political arena with a sharply worded attack on the domestic priorities of President Bush, asserting that on issues from the economy to the environment, the Republican agenda is “wrong for America.”
Returning to the state that handed him the most bitter disappointment of the 2000 campaign, Gore ended his long period on the sidelines with a rousing call to Democrats to mobilize for this fall’s midterm elections and even whetted appetites for the 2004 presidential campaign.
Gore urged his audience of party activists to apply the same energy to this fall’s Florida governor’s race as they did to the 2000 presidential campaign and recount, predicting that if they do, they will deny the president’s brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), a second term in office.
“Even then our work won’t be done,” Gore said. Then, not needing to say that he was referring to 2004, he added to a chorus of cheers, “At that point, it will be one down and one to go.”
The party’s 2000 nominee proved to be the marquee speaker at a two-day convention that features other national Democrats who are also considering running for president two years from now.
Many Democrats are openly debating whether another Gore candidacy would be good for the party. The former vice president has not made a decision about running again, although Democratic National Committee Chairman Terence McAuliffe predicted he will.
Gore’s performance, and the response he received, appeared aimed at silencing criticism that he has been too timid in critiquing Bush and reminding potential rivals that he should not be ignored.
Gore noted that since Sept 11 he has strongly supported the Bush administration’s “war on terrorism”, but this time he signalled that he was ready for political combat by saying, “Here in America, patriotism does not mean keeping quiet. It means speaking up.”
He urged Democrats “to speak out boldly” against what he argued is a “right-wing” effort to use the “war on terrorism” to implement a harmful domestic agenda.
Republicans, he charged, are “selling out America’s future” for short-term gain. “America’s economy is suffering unnecessarily,” he said. “Important American values are being trampled. Special interests are calling the shots.”
Gore was careful to tread lightly in directly attacking the president. Throughout his speech, he changed references to Bush written in his prepared text to impersonal references to the administration or the GOP. But there was no mistaking his effort to help provide the Democrats with a political message they can take into the fall elections.
“Each and every time there is a dispute between the well- heeled and the well-worn, the little guy loses out with this crowd,” he said, charging that the Republicans “are out to dismantle every policy that helps the little guy and paint it as an effort to do him a favour.”
After a presidential campaign in which he awkwardly tried to keep his distance from President Bill Clinton, Gore spoke proudly of the previous administration’s fiscal record. “I don’t care what anybody says,” Gore said. “I think Bill Clinton and I did a damn good job.”
Gore used humour and sarcasm to skewer the Bush administration, with references to his own campaign in 2000 and to the record of the Clinton-Gore administration to argue that the “Republicans’ radical agenda” and “blatantly dishonest budget” were moving the country in the wrong direction.
The Bush administration, he charged, had embraced a huge tax cut that “shovelled it out to the wealthiest tax brackets,” and in doing so had helped put the federal budget back into the red. Gore also rapped the administration for tapping into the Social Security and Medicare trust funds to pay for other priorities.
Gore argued that “the differences between our parties have never been sharper,” ripping Republicans for “rhetorically” supporting the environment while allowing lobbyists for big corporations to write the administration’s environmental policies “behind closed doors.”
He accused the administration of breaking its promise not to allow drilling off Florida’s coast and of walking away from the Kyoto treaty to reduce global warming. He also said the administration had revealed its own values by seeking to “dismantle the medical privacy of American citizens” while insisting “that their own right to privacy allows them to hold secret meetings” with special interests in writing their energy plan.
Asserting that Republicans have “turned the clock back on progress,” Gore said, “I’ll tell you it’s a good thing they love the past so much, because pretty soon, they’re going to be history.”—Dawn/The Washington Post News Service.
